Katharine Lee Bates was born on 12 August 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and died on 28 March 1929 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her name is permanently associated with “America the Beautiful,” one of the most familiar and resonant poems in United States culture. Yet the anthem has sometimes obscured the range of the woman who wrote it. Bates was not simply a patriotic versifier who happened to find a m…
“It is beautiful to see out of what scant allowance of that which we call well-being, may be evolved wisdom and joy, poetry and religion.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Nora Hopper Chesson, born Nora Hopper on 2 January 1871 in Exeter, England, and dead on 14 April 1906, belongs to that compelling company of poets whose work has remained more vivid than their public reputation. Her life was brief, her published oeuvre relatively small, and the surviving record of her private circumstances incomplete. Yet the poems she left behind possess a distinctive pressure and atmosphere: they a…
“Let us not lend silver or pay gold away on this day of the days.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
